[Chris Kehnle]

To be honest I just followed the directions almost blindly and it worked.
They worked for me, but I couldn’t explain why. You’ve tried plugging in different numbers to match your bit rate right? Other than that, I’m not sure what to do. Sorry I can’t be more help, but maybe someone else will see your post and respond.

[Chris Kehnle]

Hi tucker,

Are these the instructions you followed? This is the post I found most helpful for my situation. (I unplugged the power while recording, not realizing the batteries were dead. ). I had been recording for about 17 minutes. Then not realizing what I had done, I continued to
Record on the card. When I followed the post below, I was able to see a lot of stuff on the card( even stuff I had deleted/ formatted off). I didn’t get my lost clip because I had ” recorded over it”, but this was my best shot, and hopefully can help you

David Blumenfeld Re: ZOOM H4n Material lost on SD Card
by David Blumenfeld on Oct 7, 2012 at 12:34:26 pm

I picked this up off of another post after my batteries died on Zoom 4hn at the end of a 1 hour interview. IT WORKS! Even if it reads 0 on your card!

https://zoomforum.us/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17991

Dear H4n Mac users,

I thought all was lost. My batteries ran out during a shoot (phantom power drain horror) and when I got back to the studio the file came up as 0kB. But thanks to hints from forum member aumeta I’ve managed to recover it. I thought you all should know it can all be done on a mac using freeware. Follow these steps:

1. As soon as it happens remove the SD card and don’t use it. Unknowingly, I did use it, but for less time than I had previously recorded, so I was still able to rescue a large portion of my file. The SD card works a lot more like a tape than you might imagine. So when the batteries fail, it will start recording the next file at the start of the file that failed when your batteries went. This means if you’ve recorded, say, a 25 minute track, then the batteries have run out, and then you’ve recorded 2 more 2 minute tracks on the same card with new batteries, that you can still recover the last 21 minutes of your track. Clearly, it’s better to recover all of it, so next time, carry a spare SD card, and stop using the battery damaged one!

2. Back in the studio, plug in your SD card into the card reader so it mounts.

3. then open
Applications>Utilities>Terminal
What we’re going to do is unlock some advanced features on another utility Disk Utility

4. Once Terminal has started up copy and paste this in:
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility advanced-image-options 1
then press return

5. Now open
Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility

6. Select your SD card in the list of drives, then click the New Image button

7. What we’re doing is making a copy of the entire SD card, including all the empty bits. This allows the audio program we’ll use which can read RAW files to read the entire disk image as one enormous audio file.
So, in the Image Format tab select “Entire Device” and have encryption set to “None” and save your disk image to a drive big enough to hold it.
instructions with pictures are here https://echoone.com/filejuicer/disk-images (ignore the last section about file juicer it will not help your problem

8. Now you’ve got a file that you can open in your audio program. One that can do it is a piece of freeware called Audacity which I found out from the forum post by johnsantic.
Download the Mac version from here: https://audacity.sourceforge.net/

9. Here I’ll adapt John Santic’s instructions from this post which saved some files for me which we’re’n’t 0kB (https://www.2090.org/zoom/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=14366)
“The normal way to load an audio file into Audacity is to use the typical “File > Open” command. But they have another way to read in a file in case the header is damaged or missing. This uses the “Project > Import Raw Data” command. The next step is to select your new disk image in the dialog box that opens.

10. Another dialog box should open which asks for audio parameters, this should be the same as the way in which you recorded the file:
In my case this was:

– Signed 24-bit PCM (ie 24 bit WAV on the zoom)
– Little-endian [this means the audio data in the file is least-significant-byte first – it will be the same whether you recorded at 24 or any other bit rate]
– 2 Channels (Stereo)
– Start offset = 910 [this is the normal size of an H4n header, you should also try 0 and 2 if you are at 24-bit, or 0, and 1 for 16-bit]
– Amount to import = 100%
– Sample rate = 48000

After you click “Import”, Audacity reads in the file. What you’ll probably find is large blocks of interference with audio files inbetween. If you find your lost recording, select that section, then use the command “File > Export” and save it under a different file name, with the same settings as your other original sound files. Joy! OK so you’ll probably lose a tiny bit at the end and at the start, but I’m sure you’ll live having recovered the vast majority of what you thought was lost forever

11. If you don’t find your audio file in there this time do not despair. Instead just go back to the start of part 10 and enter in a different start offset (0, 1 or 2) and you’ll find a different portion of the audio you recorded will appear. I found my lost file on the second attempt when I set it to 0. Just keep on trying.

I thought I’d messed up the whole project. Now I’m full of the joys of life, and thought I should share it with you all.

Ta,

James

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zoom1061
Post subject: Re: Ran out of Battery and found only a 0Kb file? There’s hoPosted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:11 pm

new to this board

Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2012 6:12 pm
Posts: 1
I just wanted to affirm Jimmybulb’s post. Thank you! and to anyone else who did the behind the scenes work to make recovery possible, you rock! I spent 4 hours troubleshooting and downloading random freeware programs, but when I found this post, all was saved except about 15 seconds that were somehow corrupted. I ran the process twice through to see if the file would come out clean but it didn’t so I’m guessing somewhere in the process of my Zoom H2 becoming unplugged, the file became corrupted. I’m not really sure. I was recording a wedding and it finished. Because my batteries were dead, I had confidently plugged my zoom H2 into a power strip thinking it was the ultimate, safe source of power. Well, the sound board just happened to be plugged into this power strip and the sound engineer unplugged it after the wedding. The zoom power was cut off before I could stop recording. Note to self – set up at least 2 layers of good quality audio backup if possible.

A couple helpful notes.
1. Don’t stop trying if you get an audacity file that is ALL interference. You probably got the audio parameters wrong. The sample rate, offset, stereo or mono, little endian all seems to matter. I tried multiple settings before I got the right one and sometimes the audio came out as all interference (LOUD interference) or super slow low voices.
2. All the freeware recovery programs I tried didn’t do what I wanted. Most recover deleted files, pics, etc.. not fix audio files without a header.
3. I tried 0 for the offset, and it came out as pure interference. 1 and 2 both worked in my case. I was recording 16bit, stereo, at 44kHz.
4. DEFINITELY choose a low percentage to import to test first. Setting it at 5% for about 7.4GB of a card only took about 30 sec to process on my macbook pro.

Good luck!
Nick

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[Chris Kehnle]

I tried the steps listed above and got the large file in audacity. I found a lot of old deleted stuff, and the new stuff, but not the file i was looking for. I will look again to see if it is out of order or something. The clip I’ve lost was about 10 mins I would say and I recorded for about 40 mins after

[Chris Kehnle]

Thanks for the reply Chris! If I recorded after “the incident” am I just out of luck as far as you know?

[Chris Kehnle]

I have a similar problem. I tried to quickly switch from a/c power to battery, and found out the hard way that the batteries in the Zoom were drained when I removed the A/c plug. power shut down before i stopped the record. Then I continued to record a couple more scenes.
When I got back to review audio, I saw that the 1 file read 0kb. I’m at a loss here…PLEASE HELP!!!

[Chris Kehnle]

Hi Stu,
Did you ever find a solution?!?!
I have a similar problem. I tried to quickly switch from a/c power to battery, and found out the hard way that the batteries in the Zoom were drained when I removed the A/c plug. power shut down before i stopped the record. Then I continued to record a couple more scenes.
When I got back to review audio, I saw that the 1 file read 0kb. I’m at a loss here… If you found anything in your search that may help I’d really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Chris

[Chris Kehnle]

Hello,
This seems like a great option. I have not started this process yet.
I was wondering if I can use the copied folder in stead of using the card itself?? (I copied EVERYTHING from the card. I am nervous that if I use the card and screw something up, it will be lost forever…
Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Chris